Inside the Weightroom Ways of Becoming a Better Athlete. (Part 1)
This questions has raised time and time again and is a popular topic of discussion in many messege boards. How do we become a better athlete? Do we know? Does anybody know? I will discuss some ways in which one can better prepare themselves to become a better athlete in sports ranging from basketball to football to ice hockey.
Goals are key. They are set to base your training program off of. Each goal, short and long, should be fit to help the athlete train for their specific sport. Make your goals acheivable and realistic for you depending on your weaknesses and your strengths.
Motivation and desire are also a key elements which you MUST have. What is an athlete with out any type of motivation or desire to become the best in the sport? Without motivation and desire you are setting yourself up to fail. You must have 110% determination to achive anything in your sport and the desire to never give up. These are many qualities one needs to have, not learn, to become successfull.
There are many forms of training out there that are said to be the best for an athlete. To some that might hold true.. to others it might not. Take bodybuilding for example, how many young teens are drawn into the bodybuilding hype of bettering their physical appearance? Many of them are drawn to it, believing that it will make them become a better football player or better track star. If you were to look at most of the top NFL, MLB, and NBA star's, they train far from bodybuilding methods. "Why?" do you ask? In every sport we have ballistic movments.... these range from running, jumping, jogging, and BELIEVE it or not walking. Now with that stated, many bodybuilders believe that all types of explosive exercises are dangerous and hazardous to the athlete. This is really interesting considering that Olympic weightlifing, one of the most ballistic sports, has the lowest injury rate per 100hrs trained then other forms of fitness training like bodybuilding.(Brian P. Hamill, "Relative Safety of Weightlifting and Weight Training," _Journal of Strength Conditioning Research, Vol. 8, No. 1(1994): 53-57) So by cutting out all explosive movements they must train the athlete slow correct? How would this prepare you for the field if its full of ballistic type movments like running and jumping? Considering that Power and Speed are the 2 most needed mechanics for athletes to be sucessfull, ballistic movements are needed to develop those attributes. The majority of bodybuilders have a high recruitment of Type IA muscle fibers. Type IA muscle fibers are also known as Red Fibers. They have a high tolorance to fatigue. They are also mostly recruited mainly by slow movments.(Siff, "SuperTraining 2000") The reason for this is because of the style of training they perform. Most of their movments are at a slow pace for a very larg amount of reps focusing more on endurance rather then explosiveness.
Now that I have shown you why bodybuilding is not the best idea for athletets to train by, we are now going to look at forms of ballistic training. Olympic weightlifting has been around since 1330bc in china. (Siff, "SuperTraining 2000") The Olympic weightlifting athletes have one of the highest firing and recruitment rate of Type IIB muscle fibers which are know as FT (fast twitch) fibers. These fibers are trained through explosive ballistic movments such as lifts like the snatch, Clean and Jerk,and powercleans. Here is a list of Olympic movments that an athlete could place into their program:
Clean and Jerk
Clean Pull
Snatch
Snatch Pull
Power Snatch
Hang Cleans
Push Press
Push Jerks
Hanging Snatch
Hanging Pull
High Pull
The successe of these athletes range from the olympic platform to the NBA. I feel Olympic movments should be a must in every training program for an athlete. There are many benefits that can be achieved by performing olympic lifts and some of them are:
1. The mere practice of the (Olympic) lifts [the snatch and the clean & jerk as well as related lifting techniques] teaches an athlete how to explode.
2. The practice of proper technique in the Olympic lifts teaches an athlete to apply force with his or her muscle groups in the proper sequences.
3. In mastering the Olympic lifts, the athlete learns how to accelerate objects under varying degrees of resistance.
4. The athlete learns to receive force from another moving body effectively and becomes conditioned to accept such forces.
5. The athlete learns to move effectively from an eccentric contraction to a concentric one.
6. The actual movements performed while executing the Olympic lifts are among the most common and fundamental in sports.
7. Practicing the Olympic lifts trains an athlete's explosive capabilities, and the lifts themselves measure the effectiveness of the athlete in generating explosive power to a greater degree than most other exercises they can practice.
8. The Olympic lifts are simply fun to do. (Drechsler, "The Weightlifting Encyclopedia")
It was made very clear in 1964 who the athletes were who had the best maximum speed and strength. In a field test at the olympics in Mexico City they found that the Olympic weightliftes could out jump the jumpers in the vertical jump and out sprint the sprinters in the 25m. This is extremely amazing consdering these athletes don't run or jump. The reason being for this is that these athletes (Olympic Lifters) have the ability to turn on as many moto units as possible and keep them firing once they have them geared up. Very sad that only around 1500 competing Olympic Lifts in the USA today. These numbers amazingly low considering other countries (mostly East) such as China and Russia have over 1 million competing Olympic Athletes are.
Examples of how AMAZING feats of the Olympic Weightlifter are:
Note: The fallowing Stats are from Chad Ikei's "Pulling to Jump Higher"
"Nicu Vlad of Romania, World Record holder and Two time Olympic Medallist, came to the United States back in 1990, with now current U.S. National and Olympic Team Coach Dragomir Cioroslan, for a training camp. It was here at the U.S. Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, that this 100-kg (220 lbs) weightlifter recorded a 42" vertical jump. Not to mention he was in weightlifting shoes, which weighs a lot more than tennis shoes and no formal warm-up. (Snatch 200 kg, Clean and Jerk 232.5 kg)
Wesley Barnett of Team USA, 3-time Olympian and Silver Medallist @ 1997 World Championships, have legs (especially hamstrings) and ass like a thoroughbred on him that most body builders would like to have. He has recorded vertical jumps of over 39" @ a height of 6'1" and 105 kg (231 lbs). I've even witnessed him dunking a basketball while jumping over my head, and I do mean literally jumping over my head which of course only stands a mere 5'2" but he straddle jumped directly over my head and dunked. (Snatch 175 kg, Clean and Jerk 220 kg)
Mark Henry, 1996 Olympic Team Member, now known as "Sexual Chocolate" on the WWF scene, had quite a vertical jump. At 6'3" tall he could dunk a basketball, not to mention that he could squat over 1000 lbs and deadlift over 900 lbs. Now dunking a basketball at 6'3" doesn't sound that hard, but take in to account that he weighed at that time 175 kg (385 lbs). Now that's impressive for a big guy. (Snatch 180 kg, Clean and Jerk 220 kg)
Shane Hamman, 2000 Olympic Team Member and current National Super heavyweight Champion, another big man weighing in @ 163 kg (358 lbs) but only at a height of 5'9" tall, can jump onto boxes @ a height over 42" high. Of course Shane was also known for his squatting ability of over 1000 lbs. (Snatch 195 kg, Clean and Jerk 230 kg)."
Most of you are saying, "Big deal its just a vertical!" In a 1979 study by Bosco and Komi (Bosco C & Komi (1979b) Mechanical characteristics and fiber compostion of human leg extensor muscles Eur Jo Appl Pysicol 41:275-284) concluded that the vertical jump performance is related to the percent of FT fibers. I think I have made it clear of the benefits of Olympic Lifts and the carry over it has to the recruitment and fire of FT fibers. Now I will show you more cases of how Olympic lifts help an athlete:
"Steve Bedrosian recently retired at the age of thirty-nine after a very successful career as a professional baseball pitcher, most recently as relief pitcher for the Atlanta Braves. His career had very nearly ended five years earlier. When he was thirty-four, Steve lost some of the feeling in two of the fingers of his pitching hand. As a result he had lost the ability to pitch effectively and was forced to take a year off in an effort to rehabilitate his hand. Many baseball experts felt that after this kind of setback his career was over. It was at this point that he met Ben Green, athletic director at the White Oak Athletic Center in Newnan, Georgia. Ben put Bedrosian on a program of Olympic lift training during his year off . After six months of such training, Bedrosian added eight miles per hour to his fast ball and was able to dunk a basketball (something he had often tried but had never in his life been able to do). Steve made a triumphant return to the mound during the 1993 season.
A second example is professional golfer Cindy Schreyer. She was introduced to the Olympic lifts by Ben Green in 1993. After approximately eight months of training, Cindy increased her drive by a full forty yards, a staggering improvement for a person already highly skilled at golf. Cindy won her first PGA tournament shortly after this dramatic improvement in her drive occurred..
Derrick Adkins was a sophomore at Georgia Tech when he began to work with Lynne Stoessel-Ross, then the school’s strength coach. Lynne has been a national champion and a national record holder in weightlifting and has represented the United States in the Women’s World Weightlifting Championships. She has a strong academic background in physical education, having earned a Masters degree in that field. She currently works as and educator and strength and conditioning coach in Lubbock, Texas. Derek had already reached the international level as a 400 meter hurdler when he began training with Lynne in 1990, having won the Atlantic Coast Conference championships and placed sixth at the World University Games. His best time was 49.53 seconds. In less than a year of training on the Olympic lifts, he shaved nearly a second off his already outstanding time (reducing it to 48.6 seconds). An injury sustained during an unfortunate running accident hampered his training for more than a year after that. However, after recovering from his injury and resuming training on the Olympic lifts, he reduced his time by another .9 seconds and went on to win the U.S. Nationals and the Goodwill Games. More recently Derek won the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta." (Drechsler, "The Weightlifting Encyclopedia")
Now for the final words. I have wrote this article to help all athletes understand how to better themselfs in their training. Their are many benefits of bodybuilding for bodybuilding, but not for carry over to athletic preformance. Their are many benefits from Olympic lifting that DO have a carry over to athletic proformance. I hope I have presented enough info to show the athlete the right direction in training to be the best he can be. Very shortly I will have Part 2 "Outside the Weightroom Ways of Becoming a Better Athlete". I wish the best of luck to the athlete and hope all your goals and dreams become a reality.
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